By Dave Warner

Shiny Bright, LLC, a new childcare center, opened at 45 Furnace Street in Little Falls, with a ribbon cutting ceremony on Wednesday morning.

One of the owners, Myrna Grosse, stated, “I want to thank everyone and all my helpers and the volunteers who have helped us. This has been my goal for years, and to date, I’ve been in this business for 35 years. It’s an all-new adventure now because the rules are all different.”

She said they are taking 30 months and up right now and can take up to 54 children.

Heidi Cochran, with the UpMobility Foundation, said, “We’re honored to partner in this project to help with the childcare challenges here in Little Falls. Myrna and her team have done a great job, and we’re excited to see what’s next. Hopefully, this will bring more families into Little Falls to live and work.

Mayor Deborah Kaufman cut the ribbon and stated, “This is one of the great things I get to do – help open a new business. The daycare here has been missing for a long time, and we finally have a daycare facility in our city. All of the people who had to drive for so many miles to drop children off can now come just around the corner.”

“It’s been a couple of years in the making, and I’m so proud of it. The Youth and Family Center has a great new, bright, and cheerful facility. People are going to love it,” she remarked.

Tony DeLuca, Executive Director of the Youth and Family Center, said, “This is a happy day, and it’s the culmination of a long-term project. First of all, I want to thank all the donors, individuals, corporations, and foundations that contributed to the Capital Campaign that enabled us to build the facility.”

“Beyond that, we secured funding from UpMobility Foundation specifically to equip the child care center, which was very important because they needed supplies and materials to get them up and running. So, it’s a great project that has come to fruition.”

“Elizabeth King and Myrna Grosse have done a great job in pulling together what was needed to get the licensing together to open up,” he said.

Right now, they are licensed for toddlers and school-aged children, and when they complete some additional work on the facility, they’ll be licensed for infants.